7.2.7 Ensure Advertising Privacy Protection in Safari Is Enabled

Information

Apple provides a framework that allows advertisers to target Apple users and end-users with advertisements. While many people prefer that when they see advertising it is relevant to them and their interests, the detailed information that is data mining collected, correlated, and available to advertisers in repositories is often disconcerting. This information is valuable to both advertisers and attackers and has been used with other metadata to reveal users' identities.

Organizations should manage advertising settings on computers rather than allow users to configure the settings.

Apple Information

Ad tracking should be limited on 10.15 and prior.

Rationale:

Organizations should manage user privacy settings on managed devices to align with organizational policies and user data protection requirements.

Impact:

Uses will see generic advertising rather than targeted advertising. Apple warns that this will reduce the number of relevant ads.

Solution

Graphical Method:
Perform the following steps to set Safari to allow privacy-preserving measurement of ad effectiveness:

Open Safari

Select Safari from the menu bar

Select Prefernces

Select Privacy

Set Warn when visiting a fraudulent site to enabled

Terminal Method:
Run the following command to enable allow privacy-preserving measurement of ad effectiveness in Safari:

$ /usr/bin/sudo -u <username> /usr/bin/defaults write /Users/<username>/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari WebKitPreferences.privateClickMeasurementEnabled -bool true

example:

$ /usr/bin/sudo -u firstuser /usr/bin/defaults write /Users/firstuser/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari WebKitPreferences.privateClickMeasurementEnabled -bool true

Note: To run the Terminal commands, Terminal must be granted Full Disk Access in the Security & Privacy pane in System Preferences.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/4176

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT, SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATIONS PROTECTION

References: 800-53|CM-10, 800-53|SC-18, CSCv7|7.1

Plugin: Unix

Control ID: 80bd15d7028bd33c51d4dc5466f5e4c2f77f0311ab42379a894851f87b7c428f